r/theydidthemath • u/Call-Me-Matterhorn • 1d ago
[request] Is the $20 billion figure cited accurate?
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u/-Add694 1d ago edited 1d ago
For the sake of consistency, there are about 770,000 homeless in America. $20 billion / 770,000 homeless = $25,974.03 annually per homeless. Avg subsidized apartments in America are about $1250 a month. $25,974.03 / 12 months / $1250 a month = $914.50 left per month for food etc. So just $20 billion would not be enough, but annually it would sound kind of doable throughout America but probably not in high urban areas like New York City. Then you factor in government inefficiencies…
Edit: I got the 770,000 homeless from the Jan 2025 count and other costs from what Google stated Edit 2: it’s 20 billion annually
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u/Vladtepesx3 1d ago
So that would be 20 billion per year and not just 20 billion total, ans would only work if we had 770,000 extra subsidized apartments (not even counting the extra costs of subsidizing those apartments) and they budgeted the leftover money wisely
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u/thisstartuplife 1d ago
The government used to build homes like this and ended it about 40 years ago. It would be a yearly cost if they rented instead of purchased land for the sole purpose of this.
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u/Jdevers77 1d ago
They stopped this practice because those government built homes or “projects” were absolutely horrible places to live. Imagine the most run down apartment complex you personally know of, now every time there is a problem instead of talking to a landlord you file a grievance with a government agency that honestly doesn’t give a fuck whether it gets fixed or not, also when someone gets hurt on the property because of disrepair instead of being able to sue a landlord or even file charges against a landlord, you can’t do anything because of sovereign immunity with only a few exceptions allowed under FTCA. Also zero fucks given about crime which leads to a high crime rate which leads to eventually the police completely ignoring the neighborhood and then even worse crime (see Cabrini-Green in Chicago prior to demolition as an example).
Source: grew up in a project in the Mississippi River delta.
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u/thisstartuplife 1d ago
They actually stopped because they didn't give a shit about you and didn't want to spend money bringing in more police, social workers, medical professionals and mental health care people with the right kind of training and personality.
Crime doesn't magically disappear because you stop giving someone a home.
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u/Emperor_of_Alagasia 1d ago
Another issue with their model was it basically took all impoverished people and shoved them into slums, which is not a recipe for economic mobility. Housing programs that distribute people into mixed income neighborhoods have much better outcomes
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u/Infern0-DiAddict 1d ago
Yeh the program was started by those that wanted to help but eventually funded and run by those that just wanted to segregate.
If run well public housing and support systems can and will help people and reduce crime.
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u/incarnuim 1d ago
Missing from this entire discussion is the fact that the projects were built at the same time as school integration, Brown, Plessy, White Flight, MLK, redlining, etc. The idea of the projects didn't fail because it was run by the government, it failed because white people in the deep south REALLY hate black people.
The fact that no one has mentioned this in the thread above is like waiting until minute 59 of the 1 hour meeting to mention that the entire projects is cancelled and everyone is fired...
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u/LegendofLove 21h ago
Well the government also really hated black people like yeah this is a society problem but we still see similar problems within the government because we put people from the black hating areas in charge
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u/Nonaveragemonkey 12h ago
The projects did not do well anywhere they were built. North, South, East or West, but segregation and disdain for a demographic was a pretty big contributing factor. Government incompetency was another.
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u/Zithrian 10h ago
This person has fallen into the classic conservative propaganda “common sense” tactic. It SOUNDS logical that because in the past the “projects” were dangerous and horrible they are bad and therefore the very concept is bad.
They don’t stop to think “hmmm, I wonder if there’s really just not enough resources being allocated to help these people, and whether I’ve really considered that rehabilitating someone who IS homeless leads to that person paying BACK into the public good through taxes in the future…”
Seen it a million times. “People want too much free shit!!” It’s called investing. Give your citizens what they need when they need it and they contribute far more than what you gave them over the rest of their lives.
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u/sllewgh 1d ago
Public housing is shitty because it's deliberately underfunded so it doesn't compete too much with for-profit housing, not because it's inherently bad.
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u/Jdevers77 1d ago
It isn’t inherently bad, it will always be inherently bad in the United States though without effectively an entirely different economic system.
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u/DonaIdTrurnp 1d ago
In order for it to not reduce the housing shortage, it must be so inherently bad that nobody who has a choice prefers it to living rough. The bottom of the market-rate housing market is competing with living on the street, and getting people who just barely prefer paying for that housing to living on the street.
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u/xFblthpx 1d ago
But is it worse than being homeless?
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u/Jdevers77 1d ago
Well, that isn’t the alternative. Since that time frame HUD has instead offered section 8 stipends so that people who would have qualified to live in a project instead get a financial stipend. Not everyone who is homeless now would have qualified to live in government housing then either.
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u/scaredatthepark 1d ago
Except the line for section 8 is random and years long. Especially if you didn't pop out a child. And it just closed in Los Angeles.
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u/Jesta23 1d ago
All of that has solutions though.
In Utah the projects were required to be spaced out. And every neighborhood had to have some. So even super rich areas got them.
Crime was a non issue for the most part.
What killed it here was that as Elon said most are addicts that absolutely destroyed the homes. The repair costs were through the roof.
Elon is a fucking idiot. But he’s right in this instance.
20b might build you the houses but when the tenants destroy them every month what can you do?
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u/vitringur 1d ago
The opportunity cost is still a yearly cost.
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u/thisstartuplife 1d ago
Sure but I'm gonna guess getting people off the street to improve market values and reduce additional issues where police are called will be a net positive investment
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u/slampig3 1d ago
I am going throw out that my hometown turned a hotel into a living space for the homeless around covid the city leased the hotel for 2 maybe 3 years. When the lease expired the city had to basically pay to gut the hotel and remodel it because it was so fucked.
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u/Caterpillar89 1d ago
Ya homeless people with mental problems do not take good care of living units given to them...
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u/prismatic_raze 1d ago
Also not factoring in all the prep it takes to actually transition a person indoors. You cant just stick em in an apartment and call it a day. They need help reintegrating, learning to manage finances, learning social norms etc otherwise they'll just get immediately evicted.
Source: 4 years working to end homelessness
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u/Tullyswimmer 23h ago
It's rough, knowing what I do about some of my local homeless population. (I have a former coworker who grew up with a lot of them in the public housing projects)
The housing is the easiest problem to "solve" up front. But people usually don't end up in these situations because of a lack of housing. Usually the addiction and/or mental health issues leads to the loss of housing. You have to fix all the problems, not just the fact that they don't have a roof over their heads.
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u/prismatic_raze 22h ago
Yep exactly. I will say in my experience the mental health and addiction issues are more often a symptom of being unhoused. As in those issues develop/worsen due to being homeless but they often arent the original reason a person became homeless.
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u/GovernorSan 1d ago
How much would it cost today to build those extra housing units?
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u/Khaos0341 1d ago
Arnold Schwarzenegger donated $250,000 to build 25 tiny homes for the homeless. Now there's pre-fab pop-up homes you can get from Amazon for $10,000. I'm not saying it has to be them, just a reference. So, doing something similar is looking to be around $10,000 per home.
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u/Square-Singer 1d ago
The tiny homes are a crappy way to spend the money. It's more expensive than an apartment building, while at the same time wasting a ton of money on heating and cooling.
If you have a look at the buildings donated by Schwarzenegger, they are just uninsulated sheds, nothing more.
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u/findar 1d ago
If you have a look at the buildings donated by Schwarzenegger, they are just uninsulated sheds, nothing more.
Seattle has a similar program and you have to understand that they aren't a permanent solution but a step towards one. The intent is that they can get these to a site faster than a permanent solution can be built. Once in some kind of housing, they are then on a list to get to a more permanent structure.
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u/Square-Singer 1d ago
A stacked cluster of container homes would be simpler, cheaper, better insulated and more durable.
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u/Loki-L 1✓ 1d ago
It is not just theoretical. Things like that have been done in places like Finland.
You will never get to stop homelessness entirely, but in many cases if you help get people started by giving them a roof over their head food to eat and most importantly access to their meds, they can become stable and productive members of society again.
So you wouldn't need to pay them all their rent for the rest of their lives, just long enough for them to get back on their feet.
You also have to contrast any money you spend on homeless with the damage to society caused by ongoing homeless problems.
If you give people what they need so they don't need to steal anymore to keep themselves fed and self-medicated, this will be cheaper than not doing that in many cases.
Plus the effect on property values by getting the homeless of the streets.
Spending money to end homelessness would not just be the right thing to do ethically it would be the smart choice economically.
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u/Silly_Bodybuilder_63 23h ago
Yeah, but the safety net of public housing would massively increase the bargaining power of millions of hyper-exploited workers and thus reduce the overall profitability of capital, which is already under downward pressure because it needs to earn a percentage return forever, which requires infinite exponential growth, despite the physical impossibility of the economy’s productive capacity growing exponentially forever to keep pace with that.
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u/1isntprime 1d ago
Inefficiencies? California has spent 24 billion to combat homelessness and hasn’t made a dent. It’s beyond inefficiencies it’s corruption.
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u/bblackow 1d ago
So $20B would cover the housing for 1 year? I wouldn’t consider that “ending homelessness”.
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u/Wesly-Titan 1d ago
I'm not saying it would end homelessness. But if you gave every homeless person in america a home for 1 year, no stress, you might be surprised at what they could accomplish. It's hard to get your life together when your nervous system is stressed to capacity 24/7.
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u/edwardothegreatest 1d ago edited 1d ago
They’ve done this, just give homeless people an income for a year, and the majority of the homeless in the program become self sufficient by the end. Like, a big majority.
Edit: I misremembered this. While the study found that few used the money for drugs etc, and 45% got shelter, it was not conclusive about what it would take to become self sufficient, though some did.
Study is here: https://coloradosun.com/2024/06/19/homeless-payments/
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u/arbiter12 1d ago
I know you really want this to be true, but homelessness (especially in the US) is rarely the "just lack of a home". It's also being unemployable, having health issues, having no documentation (literally us citizens with no ID and no way to get one), drugs, mental illness, lack of marketable skills, and so many more things. (that can happen alone or all at once).
To say that "most US homeless just need 12 months of rent" is just not true. Maybe 40 years ago.
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u/Powerful-Eye-3578 1d ago
Most of that stuff is exponentially easier to address when you do have a home is the point.
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u/arbiter12 1d ago
exponentially easier != easy.
Solving implies fully solved, however, not "exponentially easier to solve".
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u/Powerful-Eye-3578 1d ago
Sure, but not doing anything to help until we can do something that completely help just lets the problem get worse. Don't let perfection be the enemy of good and all that.
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u/Loud-Ad-2280 1d ago
That’s how countries with low homelessness did it. They just gave them homes
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u/ShikaMoru 1d ago edited 1d ago
Huh? So you mean to tell me if there's more healthy people living in livable situations, that it would help everyone as a whole? Mind. Blown.
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u/Loud-Ad-2280 1d ago
Crazy right! It’s almost like the common person doesn’t benefit from other people’s suffering. I wonder why we let so much suffering occur?! I wonder if there is a class of people that benefit from said suffering?!? Couldn’t be the class of people saying that people deserve to suffer right?!?!?!
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u/ShikaMoru 1d ago
Hmmm, now who could be raking in all the benefits while the ones who suffer continue to get taken from and get nothing in return? Surely, there must be a culprit or multiple culprits behind this, right??
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u/Loud-Ad-2280 1d ago
That would make sense! But I’m much too angry about a multicolored flag to look into that!
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u/ShikaMoru 1d ago
Those darn alphabet ppl that don't affect any part of my life or supposedly groom and mess with kids, unlike those ppl who constantly appear in the news for doing it. It's just a coincidence that the majority of them represent the same party and for some reason are religious leaders BUT ITS JUST A COINCIDENCE THATS ALL!
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u/heresyforfunnprofit 1d ago edited 1d ago
Very true. There’s also the basic economic principles in action here that will exacerbate the problem - when you subsidize anything, including homelessness, you produce more of it.
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u/ghost_desu 1d ago
A much much much more effective way of combatting homelessness is building new housing. It might not get people off the street in the short term (there SHOULD be other programs to help with that to be clear), but in the long term if the government owns 30% of all housing units and the rent is low enough to afford with (local) minimum wage, suddenly the 70% privately owned units are under pressure to compete instead of just going up up up while lobbying to suppress denser development.
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u/Panzerv2003 1d ago
Probably would be better for the government to build apartments and rent them to people at lower prices that go into renovations and further development, it's a long term project but definitely better than just outright paying for everything. If someone wants to get back on their feet giving them a job and an affordable apartment should do the trick.
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u/CheezKakeIsGud528 1d ago
You also have to factor in inflation that this would cause. Here in LA, we have a high homeless population, but we also have a housing shortage. So even if everyone had the money for rent, there isn't enough housing for them all. So it'd jack the housing costs up even more and wouldn't solve the problem simultaneously.
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u/Dodec_Ahedron 1d ago
True, but there's also an economic stimulus associated with it. Building new apartment complexes will directly employ hundreds of people and indirectly employ hundreds, maybe thousands more. That money is then circulated in local communities, which further stimulates the economy.
Then, you have the economic savings provided by the former homeless not being on the streets anymore. No more cleaning up waste in the streets, significantly reduced petty crime, and less strain on emergency services. All of those compound to offset the cost of construction, but that savings could also be applied to build even more housing NOT intended for housing the homeless.
Don't get me wrong, SOCAL has a land problem. There are too many people trying to live in too small of an area. That being said, their are definitely options. Increased public transit, specifically passenger train routes, could be used to effectively expand commute distances without adding time. Also, a lot of properties are taken by people wanting to run AirBnBs. You could put additional taxes on owning a non-primary residence to further fund more buildings and free up more units in the cities.
And where does the land for all of this expansion come from? Well, my personal take is golf courses. They should be seized and the property used for housing. While this thought originally came from the fact that I just hate golf, it actually does have some impactful policy reasoning, too. Now, primarily, the main draw is that you could get a lot of additional housing on that land, but the secondary reason is resource allocation, namely water. Golf courses consume HUGE amounts of water in a state that has been hit with drought after drought in recent years. Additionally, the Colorado River is dangerously low, so freeing up billions of gallons of water will simultaneously mitigate issues with water shortages, but also help with wildfire prevention.
Just a few thoughts on my part though.
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u/Vladtepesx3 1d ago edited 1d ago
No, California alone spent $24 billion on resolving our homeless crisis in 5 years and homelessness is even worse
This actual number you would need is insensible to calculate because there is no amount of money that can get a mentally ill drug addicts back on their feet, unless they voluntarily want to stick with treatment long term. It's like lottery winners or pro athletes that receive many millions of dollars and are still broke within a few years, but on a massive scale.
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u/clearly_not_an_alt 1d ago
That's insane. The article says CA has about 177,000 homeless, so they spent $135,000/homeless person.
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u/bongobutt 1d ago
$135k per person sounds about right. I know someone who worked for a nonprofit shelter/housing organization for homeless, and that figure is right on the mark.
To anyone thinking that number sounds insane - you aren't wrong. But it is very real. Let me give you an indication of why.
A) Yes, the number is high. But in some cases, this is actually far cheaper than the alternative inside a broken system. Imagine a highly dysfunctional homeless person who is getting admitted to the hospital or getting locked up in jail for loitering, stealing, or public intoxication every single night. An emergency room visit can cost $2000 a night, and imagine someone doing that every single day, and in a different hospital every single night. In many jurisdictions, the local city is the one who ends up footing the bill for that, and paying $2000 every single night is $730,000 a year. $135,000 a year is barely an inconvenience by comparison.
B) The chronically homeless are often unstable - which I'm sure is no surprise to you. But this means that housing them isn't as simple as just paying $1000-$3000 a month in rent for them. I'm talking having a dedicated staff of maintenance workers who repair their plumbing when they try to cook meth in their toilet and literally blow it up. The guy I know had to replace a tenant's microwave because the tenant "cleaned" the microwave by mixing cleaners (bleach and ammonia!) in a bowl, and then running the microwave with the bowl inside off-gassing for 30 mins. One guy clogged his toilet, didn't know how to unclog it, so he just used it until it "filled up," then proceeded to spend the next 2 months "filling" the bathtub with excrement instead. The maintenance workers and social workers had to clean it all up, with the full knowledge that it 100% would happen again, because the guy couldn't be taught how to use plunger, and was too mentally unwell to ask for help.
C) When eviction is not an option for a tenant who damages the property they live in, and the state/city spends resources on social workers, rehab programs, and a bunch of strategies to try and help people who are truly unwell, the costs rack up fast. This is not a simple problem, and it fundamentally isn't a "money problem." Money is certainly an aspect that can be optimized. But the root causes of the problems are so much worse than you might imagine. The people who treat homelessness as if it were simply a "housing problem" are misguided.
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u/ph03n1x_F0x_ 15h ago
I feel that's what a lot of people miss.
Most people who are homeless for an extended period of time are that way for a reason. Mental illness, debilitating drug addiction, etc.
Its not so simple as throwing a 100 grand at them and expecting them to get better. There's an underlying mental and psychological issue behind it, and to fix that, you need cooperation, something the mentally ill probably can't give.
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u/Simba7 1d ago
How is that insane? It's like $27,000 per year per person.
Also it explicitly states that much of the funding was for housing and food assistance to help keep families from becoming homeless.
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u/clearly_not_an_alt 1d ago edited 1d ago
Did you miss the part where the problem is worse than it was before?
Not much of a fix.
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u/ExultantSandwich 1d ago
the homeless problem is even worse after 5 years of the program because the economy is worse, wages are stagnant, unemployment is up, etc etc.
The program isn’t making things worse, there just isn’t anything preventing people from becoming homeless
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u/talentiSS 1d ago
You should read Crooked Smile by Jared Klickstein. The programs are absolutely making things worse.
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u/netopiax 1d ago
economy is worse, wages are stagnant, unemployment is up
None of those three things is true, though they probably will be soon due to tariffs. California's problem is, IMO, about 80% housing supply, and 20% a ridiculous attitude towards the mentally ill ("people have a right to be psychotic on the street") which is finally changing
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u/agent-bagent 1d ago
the homeless problem is even worse after 5 years of the program because the economy is worse, wages are stagnant, unemployment is up, etc etc.
You can't just state that as a fact without providing some evidence or analytical breakdown.
For the same reason, you can't draw the opposite conclusion. The fact of the matter is the money was spent and the results are not showing. That's all that matters.
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u/Simba7 1d ago
Did you miss the past where the problem is worse than it was before?
Yes, because there's no way to tell as there is insufficient data.
And at no point is there anyone claiming that it's worse. (Other than several random people in the thread who are all surprisingly - and suspiciously - consistent in their messaging and word-choice.)
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u/won_vee_won_skrub 1d ago
Do you think the problem would be better or worse if they had not spent money trying to address it?
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u/clearly_not_an_alt 1d ago
That not really a fair comparison. It needs to be compared against whatever else that money could have been used for, and from that article it certainly seems like it could have been more effective doing something else
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u/endthepainowplz 1d ago
Yeah, a lot of the people who act like throwing money at a problem don't really understand it. I'm not saying I understand it fully, but watching videos from people like Brandon Buckingham, where the homeless people refuse to go to the shelter because they can't use drugs there. Many people are chronically homeless. Mentally they are not able to keep a job and have stability in their life. The most effective way of dealing with people like this is charities that can help people more directly, rather than just giving them a place to live and a check every month, they can help and understand them on a more personal level.
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u/Simba7 1d ago
and homelessness is even worse
That's not what the article says.
Despite the roughly billions of dollars spent on more than 30 homeless and housing programs during the 2018-2023 fiscal years, California doesn't have reliable data needed to fully understand why the problem didn't improve in many cities, according to state auditor's report.
"This report concludes that the state must do more to assess the cost-effectiveness of its homelessness programs," State Auditor Grant Parks wrote in a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom and lawmakers.
It's clear that it didn't have the impact they'd hoped for, but it's difficult to quantify the impact because records were not kept.
That's obviously a big problem, but it's a very different problem.
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u/BiomeWalker 1d ago
This right here is the most correct answer here I think.
Government spending is almost laughably inefficient, just check out that segment of The Weekly Show with Ezra Klein. A government program to expand broadband internet to rural areas had so much red tape and procedure that they had 56 regions start the process in 2021 and only 3 have "reached the initial planning stage" as of now; to be clear, that means 53 of them gave up.
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u/huslage 1d ago
Distributing funds is what governments generally do best. Congress creates rules that create inefficiencies because they are attempting to do something specific or keep certain actors from participating in funding. Cherry picked examples can be inefficient, but the overall narrative that "government is inefficient" is ridiculous on the face of it.
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u/lostcauz707 1d ago edited 1d ago
Most of the reasoning behind this is a lack of negotiating power against government contractors. They literally let every corporation take them for a ride because owners of corporations have all the power. The government buying and building housing themselves would be "against competition" so they need to go through corporate means to fund shit, which, just taking a look at the holy Trinity of healthcare, insurance, hospitals, drug companies, you can easily determine why it seems inefficient. If they don't go through corporate means they will get sued, which will push back progress on getting shit done in the first place. Not to mention the backlash for trying to do something like this getting push back from local businesses. They like cheap labor, and if someone's needs are met, they can fight for higher wages by not accepting low ones.
This is why deregulation has been such a problem in the US, because it relies on the faith and good will that companies will do the right thing over and over to better the people, even though historically the exact opposite has happened since the beginning of the US. This goes back to beyond housing, because if the idea of businesses doing what's right for people was true, we wouldn't have homelessness in the first place.
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u/JustSomeBadAdvice 1d ago
This is why deregulation has been such a problem in the US, because it relies on the faith and good will that
Corporations aren't charities, why would anyone have any expectations of faith or goodwill? That's not how any of this works. They offer services, you buy & pay for services. If you don't like it you go find someone else offering the services.
because owners of corporations have all the power.
This is nonsense. There's over a million contractors in the U.S. If one of them isn't offering fair prices or is under-performing, you fire them and hire one that does.
just taking a look at the holy Trinity of healthcare, insurance, hospitals, drug companies, you can easily determine why it seems inefficient.
All of those things are inefficient as a direct result of heavy regulations. Some of the regulations are worth it, some of them are not. Many hospitals are nonprofits, they're just forced to take patients who can't pay - and forced to follow crazy standards to avoid malpractice lawsuits or FDA consequences - and they have to raise prices to compensate. Health insurance isn't a high margin business. It's plenty inefficient on its own for many reasons, but they're not raking in the dough like tech companies do, they only do a little better than utilities profit-margin wise. Drug companies are heavily regulated and inefficient due to our patent system and robust approval system - but those two things each have their own benefits as well.
It's really easy to blame and rage against things you don't understand.
if the idea of businesses doing what's right for people was true,
No one says this, that's a straw man. We know corporations are selfish, just like many people are selfish. Turns out, when they make a product we want, our interests align.
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u/Raise_A_Thoth 1d ago
First of all, $24B over 5 years is just under $5B/year, and California has roughly 30% of America's homeless pop. That's roughly 20% of the $20B proposed budget per year, to cover 30% of the 'problem.' So it's actually doing fairly well in terms of ratio of people to expenditures, though it is under spending relative to that $20B estimate.
Secondly, the article doesn't say that the money is wasted or the programs aren't effective, it says that the largely piece-meal system of programs at California's state level have poor tracking of expenditures and measured outcomes. That needs to be remedied, but this doesn't prove that homelessness is an unsolvable problem.
This question is insensible to answer because there is no amount of money that can get a mentally ill drug addicts back on their feet
For many, they may be too far gone to hope that they will become self-sufficient, that is true, but people aren't born addicted to heroine or opiates (excepting extreme cases of addictions during pregnancies). Part of solving homelessness is addressing the shortcomings and failings of our society and culture that tossed people so quickly to the streets or drives them to seek self-medication of drugs. We can't get people to seek mental healthcare instead of drugs when healthcare is much more expensive. We can't expect people to actually go unless we stop stigmatizing seeking treatment - especially for men. We can't expect people to stick to their treatments, etc, if when they complete significant amounts of therapy they get right back into a grinding rut of existence in a low-wage, long-hours, thankless job.
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u/jointheredditarmy 1d ago
California alone has spent $20B since 2019….
If it really costs $20B to end homelessness like the guy claims then we really need to storm the CA capitol and demand to know where our tax dollars are going
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u/Weisenkrone 1d ago
Saying it costs 20B to fix homelessness is like saying it costs X amount to fix world hunger.
Homelessness very rarely is the "illness", it's a symptom.
If this was a matter of money, you'd have seen this fixed in European countries which have very strong social welfare policies that would just straight up subsidize struggling citizens and have rather strong tenant protections.
But both Germany and the USA have almost the same number of homeless people (even with the USA having like 4x the people)
Very few among the homeless population actually are on the street because they cannot afford to get housing.
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u/Ostracus 1d ago
Some countries hide the problem better. Plus being housed may not be the joy one thinks.
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u/Sufficient-Bowl8771 1d ago
While Germany and the US have roughly the same number of what are considered homeless, unsheltered homeless, i.e. people on the street, are roughly 4x of Germany's number. ~50000 in Germany vs. 200,000 in US.
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u/JonDowd762 1d ago
So per capita about the same?
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u/Sufficient-Bowl8771 1d ago
Yes. I just wanted to express that there aren’t 4 x people more on the streets per capita
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u/Simba7 1d ago edited 1d ago
Well you probably ought to, considering California can't really say why it didn't work (or even what the impact was) because of poor record-keeping from the funding recipients.
So there's literally a lack of information about where the tax dollars were spent on that project.
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u/QP873 1d ago
We could try to make a system to find government inefficiencies. We could call it DOGE or something like that.
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u/scraejtp 1d ago
Great idea. I bet that would be supported well by the public to help ensure tax dollars are spent wisely.
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u/WorldsGreatestWorst 1d ago
Usually this number is falsely cited as based on a HUD analysis, but it appears to be based on a couple assumptions using HUD’s numbers. This site breaks down the assumptions: https://www.sciotoanalysis.com/news/2024/1/16/what-would-it-cost-to-end-homelessness-in-america
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u/CaptCynicalPants 1d ago
"End homelessness" for how long? A year? Ten years? Homelessness is a reoccurring problem that new people fall into (or back into) on a daily basis. This isn't like paying someone to build a wall that's going to stand for the next hundred years. This is a problem that needs to be re-addressed every week from now until eternity.
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u/Wubwubwubwuuub 15h ago
What they mean is it would cost $20B annually to house the homeless population.
Of course, that’s a long way off ending homelessness which is often a by product of vulnerable people not having the support they need - this figure is purely the cost of housing and a drop in the ocean of what would be needed to actually address all underlying issues. Not quite as catchy for a tweet though.
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u/highknees69 1d ago
It would require more than housing. Elon isn’t wrong in part. Homelessness is a combination of 3 types (imo).
True homeless that fell on hard times and just need a place to recover and get another job, etc.
Mental illness is a large part of the homelessness population. They need help, not just a home. We need govt run mental hospitals where people can get therapy and treatment and maybe stay if it can’t be sorted.
Drug addiction is the other part of it. A large number of homeless are drug addicts. They may be a combination of drugs and mental illness, but they have to treat both.
Treat for drugs first, then mental, then job rehab and then hopefully return to the wild.
Not as simple as this, but it’s how feel we have to address it. Looking at it from just a roof over your head is naive.
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u/Adventurous_Web_2181 1d ago
I would argue that the US does an okay job on the first. Not great, but there are just enough services to let someone motivated to get back on their feet to do so. We do a horrible job on the second and third, especially given the current strategy to not "punish" their conditions.
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u/anogio 1d ago
Even if it is accurrate, it misses a crucial point: Many homeless people *are* mentally ill, which is why they are homeless in the first place.
If you gave them a house, they would most likely abandon it, burn it down, or sell it for drugs & alcohol within six months.
This is not hyperbole. It is a rising, tragic, problem in the west, since many asylums were closed down.
The people who were released, *really* should not have been released, for their own protection, because they are largely incapable of functioning in society like a healthy minded person.
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u/Adventurous_Web_2181 1d ago
San Francisco spent hundreds of millions on hotels to house the homeless during the COVID. They were shocked when the hotels demanded tens of millions of dollar to fix all of the resulting damage to the rooms.
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u/mrockracing 1d ago
I was homeless for a while. I wasn't mentally ill until after I was homeless. It tends to do that to people.
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u/LatverianBrushstroke 13h ago edited 13h ago
US state and federal governments spent about $140 Billion over the last 20 years on homelessness. During that time, the number of homeless increased from 600,000 in 2005 to about 650,000.
Suggesting that increasing this budget by $20BN would suddenly solve the problem is laughable. Elon, love him or hate his guts, is correct that most people who are homeless long term have severe mental health or substance abuse problems and government aid doesn’t seem able to address those problems.
Edit: the 650,000 figure was from 2023, I’m reading that it’s increased significantly since then… meaning I’ve probably understated my case…
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u/LEERROOOOYYYYY 1d ago
In 2024 the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) reported that 771,480 people "experienced" homelessness.
$20,000,000,000 / 771,480 = $25,924.20
So you'd give every person experiencing homelessness a lump sum of $26k
This would almost certainly "end homelessness" for a while? To the tune of a couple years of rent if that was your only goal.
You would almost certainly lose a significant amount of money renovating wherever you managed to house 770,000 people after the lease was up as the vast majority have significant drug/mental health issues, and you'd have to hope that literally every single one was fully capable of supporting themselves after the term was up, which would cost billions upon billions in additional aid to ensure.
So I guess the guy is technically correct in that with $20,000,000,000 you could give housing to every single homeless person, but as always with these stupid figures constantly circulating social media, unless you start forcing people into massive mental health or drug recovery facilities against their will, you'll always have a significant homeless population.
It is super duper easy to jump online and say "guys why is homelessness still a thing just like throw a shit ton of cash at them and everything will be solved" though and it makes people feel a lot better about not actually doing anything about homelessness so I'd say [secular talk] cook
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u/VillainOfDominaria 1d ago
Regardless of whether 20 is or not the number, the problem with these figures is that they are static.
Today you end homelessness with 20B. Great. But your country still has ll of the inherit, systemic problems that lead to those people becoming homeless (for example, a horrendous healthcare system that can bankrupt even well off middle class families when they get hit by a big shock, like cancer)
So, fast forwards 10, 15, 20 years and boom! Homelessness crisis comes back.
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u/goyafrau 1d ago
You could temporarily house a lot of people with 20B (permanently housing them is a very different question), but the problem with homelessness is that there's basically (at least) two kinds of homeless people:
- people who are like everyone else, but currently don't have a home. These people by and large usually reintegrate into society; if you helped them a bit, they'd reintegrate faster, but basically they'll be, more or less, fine
- mentally ill people who do not fit into society, whose homelessness is a function of their mental illness, and whose mental illness would not be solved by giving them housing, no matter how nice
You can somewhat improve the lot of the first kind of person with money. But, they mostly, at some point, sort themselves out. And then some other guy falls on tough luck, so you'd have a new homeless person, but they'd get over it too at some point.
The second kind of person - it's much harder to help them with "mere" money. Sure, you can spend a lot of money on various things that help them, first and foremost mental health professionals (who are expensive and in limited supply - there's a lot of other people who're also currently trying to get their help!). But ultimately that's mostly the kind of mental illness we don't yet quite know how to solve. If you literally spent 20 billion dollars on one mentally ill person, chances are they'd still be just as mentally ill, they'd just have a nice swimming pool. Kanye West is both rich and mentally ill, and that he is rich doesn't stop him from posting swastikas. If Elon Musk gave Kanye West 20B, Kanye would probably post even more swastikas. So, if you spent infinite money on making sure the second kind of homeless person was housed, they'd be technically housed, but it's not like they'd be happy, well integrated members of society, they'd just be a mentally ill person in a house. And over time new people would develop mental illnesses and fall into this category, so it's not like you'd have a permanent solution.
There's obviously also all kinds of intermediate and other people, but the above two are important and distinct facets of the problem of homelessness.
What does this imply? I have no idea. But look, Elon Musk himself seems to be kind of mentally ill, doing a lot of dumb things to society, even though he has way more than 20B to spend on himself. It's a hard problem.
Not a lot of math in this post, my point is it's not a question of numbers.
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u/YourGonnaHateMeBut 20h ago
No, it's a made up number with no weight to it. And if it is possible, then why ask Elon for it? Just have your government use a little of their one year spend to stop homelessness.
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u/sheldonlives 18h ago
As much as 80% of homeless have mental health issues and that means they are not capable of helping themselves. I don't support giving them everything for free, but when they are ready for help, we should not turn them away. The US claims to be a Christian nation, but I guess they don't like the idea of proving that with real actions. "Are there no work houses? Are there no orphanages?"
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u/-Celtic- 16h ago
But it won't work because if you buy a house at each Homeless lots of people would see an opportunity and those who work 3 jobs to afford their housse would also stop and become Homeless to get the housse
I'm not saying we should not help them but the math is wrong
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u/Boberto1952 1d ago
If you could find a way to distribute the money without incurring heavy administrative costs it’d still be like $20-25k per person as a one time payment. It’d make a difference but most of those people are homeless due to poor spending habits or some type of addiction. Within a year or so that money is gone for the majority of them and they’re back to square one.
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u/That_Jicama2024 1d ago
I'm all for ending homelessness but it seems we keep pumping billions into programs and homelessness keeps getting worse. Where is all the money going? The people who are running these "charities" pay themselves $1m/year salaries and give $5 to the homeless.
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u/MisterRobertParr 1d ago
People who think all the homeless need is a safe roof over their heads are ignoring the facts. People who live near low-barrier housing complain constantly about not feeling safe living so close.
Without mental health facilities and more robust laws to put people in there who need to be (but aren't able to make that determination for themselves), the problems will persist.
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u/NEWSmodsareTwats 1d ago
for quick perspective NY and CA combined annually spent a little more than 10 billion on homelessness services last year. less than half of the homeless population lives in those two states.
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u/slothboy 1d ago
Just putting people in houses does not solve homelessness. Root causes such as mental illness and drug addiction have to be addressed.
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u/ScndLifGftd 1d ago
A huge portion of the homeless would barely change the way they live in an apartment they don't pay for and the upkeep would double the annual budget.
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u/Darkdragoon324 1d ago
Please, Elon doesn't need to dehumanize anyone to sleep soundly at night. That would imply he feels some sort of guilt for anything he does to other people, man's a complete sociopath.
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u/steathymada 1d ago
I don't think any amount of money can fix the system which is so incredibly broken. It would take complete reform of how America treats housing and the labor force, which money cannot buy. Just my opinion tho
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u/TangerineRoutine9496 1d ago
What Elon said was wrong, what the person responded is also wrong.
Try living on the streets with nowhere to sleep for a few months and see if you don't pick up an addiction just to cope and calm down enough to sleep.
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u/sopsaare 20h ago
No because the US is spending about 2T€ on welfare every year and homelessness has not disappeared. That is thousands billions. So $2000 billion is spent on welfare every year, and you think that just getting the additional $20 billion once would do anything?
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u/AwkwardCost1764 19h ago
Depends on how you use it. There are a wide variety of theories on how to help these people. Unfortunately just giving people money is not a solution. You need to teach them how to use it and how to get more. Financially literacy sucks in the US rn and just giving people hand outs won’t make them more responsible with there money.
To really help someone you need to get them off the streets and to a point they don’t need to worry about what they are going to eat then start teaching them skills. Something to help them get a job and how to save money
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u/SnooOpinions8790 15h ago
Lets just look at the words used
"end homelessness"
That states that it ends. As other have pointed out you could perhaps provide housing and food for the homeless for 20 billion per year but that is in no way ending the problem because you keep having to spend the 20 billion or else the problem is right back where it was.
Then of course there is the issue of substance addiction (alcohol / drugs), mental health and other problems that many of the homeless have. If you were to house them in a drug/alcohol free environment many of them would refuse, if you permit the alcohol/drugs then you have not really fixed anything - and as we see in actual programs they tend to wreck the place you provide to sell stuff to fund their habits which sadly is just what addicts do. Even if we knew how to reliably rehabilitate and/or heal all these people (we don't) the cost of achieving that would be vastly greater than the stated sum.
So no its yet another not-clever comeback posted in clevercombacks. Elon is being an utter jerk and saying things in the most thoughtless and hurtful way that he can but the comeback is not even close to true.
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u/Wild-Wolverine-860 12h ago
If 20billion is correct? 350m americans? 20,000,000,000 that's 20billion Divide by 350,000,000 Americans Thsts 57 dollars each and you could solve homeless? Why demand a billionaire cure the problem? 57dollars each and as a society you can cure the problem yourselves? But no the us is a society based on greed, everyone wants to get rich, but hates rich people and hates the idea of helping others.
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u/Umaoat 12h ago
Hypothetically, you could stop homelessness with that amount of change. However it depends on how you spend it. Over the past five years, california alone has spent 20 billion to try and fight this problem and are no closer to solving it. All the programs and homeless housing have failed and created a money sink. My liberal allies do suffer from the issue of "if there's a problem, throw money at it and forget about it" mentality.
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u/AdDisastrous6738 10h ago
You might be able to end it temporarily with that much but you can’t make it go away. All the people with mental illnesses and addictions that refuse to seek help will lose whatever jobs you give them and end up back on the street. How many of the homes that you hand out will end up eventually condemned because of hoarders and lazy people who refuse to upkeep? Are you going to hire companies to forcibly clean their homes for them?
Ending homelessness is a noble cause but it’s far more complex than a simple “throw money at it” answer.
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u/Legit_Fun 10h ago
There is no price to”end” homelessness in America. You can’t force people to stay in a home. Just the same as you can’t force someone into a mental hospital, provided they’re not a danger to themselves or the public. I’ll probably get downvoted for this because it isn’t a popular topic but I’d ask anyone if they’ve done homelessness outreach out programs before. In my home we have. I have a completely different perspective on this now.
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u/Jelopuddinpop 10h ago
I'm not going to be able to find it again, but a while ago, Musk called out the WHO on a statement they made about world hunger. They said something like... "only $8B can solve world hunger forever"
And he replied. "Done. I'll fund the $8B, with the condition that if world hunger isn't eliminated, you have to pay it back at 8% APR".
They suddenly got very quiet.
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u/ahegaoking4lyfe 1d ago
I'm not for or against nor defending anything here, but just because someone is worth billions, doesn't mean they have billions, he might be worth 300+ billion, probably 1/10th of that is actual money that can be used
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u/RegularGuy70 1d ago
Right? You can’t immediately liquidate factories or businesses and get your cash out. It’s tied up for a minute and your actual cash on hand is a very little bit of the overall value.
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u/Hodorous 1d ago
USA spends over 6 trillion every year. If this or past governments would have any will they could have ended homelessness in a blink of an eye.
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u/CreeperTrainz 1d ago
Theoretically it could cost almost nothing as the number of vacant houses far exceeds the homeless population. If you have stricter tenancy laws you can increase the supply and naturally bring down the cost, which would allow most homeless to get houses anyways requiring far less subsidising. Though you'd need a lever of political willpower that definitely would never pass in the US.
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u/Alternative-Tea-1363 1d ago
There are about 770,000 homeless in America. $20B/770k is about $26k per person. That should be enough to get a person into some kind of rooming house for at least a year and still get them help with a drug addiction or a mental illness treatment plan. So sounds likely in the right ballpark, but also it's probably not a one time cost as new people become homeless all the time. So there's probably an annual maintenance cost to ensure homelessness stays ended that isn't being mentioned.
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u/BigBlueMan118 1d ago
You could fund a job guarantee program or a UBI for less than that, but also Finland's program did housing+support for somewhere between €7,000-15,000 average annual investment per homeless person (could possibly be as high as €20,000 per homeless person per year), but some broader studies indicate this might have actually saved society up to €15,000 per year in associated costs due to reduced reliance on emergency services and social support systems
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u/Scarsdale81 1d ago
Elon offered to give the dollar amount quoted as being enough "to end world hunger" on the condition that the books were open for public viewing. The UN promptly moved the goalposts.
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u/EFeuds 1d ago
Literally the exact opposite. They took Musk up on the offer for $6billion to avert famine (others said it’d end world hunger, the UN made no such claim). The presented a plan for how the money would be spent and the mechanisms they have to make sure all spending is transparent and Musk went silent and never responded
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u/Three-People-Person 1d ago
It depends on how you calculate it. If you just have money to each and every homeless person and intimidated every landlord into never raising their rent despite manymanymany bad renters now starting to move in and destroy the property and cause issues; sure 20 billion’s enough.
But the real world doesn’t work like that. When you put money into a program, it doesn’t just magically go to those who need it, it goes through the system of everyone who works on that program. There’s people at the top managing everything, people in the middle doing the paperwork to make sure the money is tracked and stored safely and not being funneled into corruption, support staff liasing with similar programs to make sure coverage is as broad as possible without stepping on any toes, people within the program making sure it all stays together and there isn’t rampant workplace harrassment, the cost of whatever building(s) these people are all working in, utilities for the buildings, janitorial staff for the buildings, furniture and transportation costs, and since these are homeless people you gotta hire people to literally just walk out on the street to give this money out- not like you can go to their home- and you gotta pay their medical for when desperate homeless people see money and try to take it by force, and then there are homeless people who might be sick and need nurses to attend them in their homes and well the hospital won’t touch them without insurance so now you gotta hire the nurses yourself, and probably a million other things before a single dime touches a homeless person’s hand.
It’s the classic military issue of the tooth-to-tail ratio, except even worse because these aren’t soldiers and you can’t just order them to shut the fuck up. So if you want a real look at what it costs to solve the problem, take a look at the total American defense budget, and then probably multiply it by 2 or 3
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u/BreakingWindCstms 1d ago
Elon is a dbag, but walk any major city on the west coast and its obvious these people need a lot more than affordable housing.
There is also zero evidence any of those west coast cities have the ability to manage the crisis, regardless of funding.
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u/Orcabolg 1d ago
Idk I do have to say the majority of homeless people I see in Phoenix are zonked out addicts who probably have severe mental illness.
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u/Suspicious-Level8818 1d ago
Don't know if it's accurate, but problems require a lot more than just money to be thrown at them. Things are more complicated than fake numbers.
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u/Repulsive-Ad-2801 1d ago
California spends billions every year on "homelessness" and the problem continues to get worse, so I have NO idea where you got this figure. From your ass?
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u/Hoppie1064 1d ago
Being homeless is a symptom, not the Disease.
You have to cure the disease, or else at best, you're just giving an addicted person a comfortable place to practice their addiction. Some would call that enabling their addiction.
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u/Alexwonder999 1d ago
I always looked at it as a low number because what should be done is building permanent housing. Theres of course more cost than just building, such as maintenance and administration of them, but if we did that it would put a huge downward pressure on housing prices for everyone, with housing prices being one of the biggest causes of homelessness right now. At 100k a unit it would be approximately 77 billion, but I think this would have sweeping benefits for everyones housing in the US, not just people experiencing homelessness.
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u/pyrotech92 1d ago
California alone has spent 24 Billion on homeless in the last 6 years and have basically made almost no progress.
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u/Once-Upon-A-Hill 1d ago
California alone has spent 24 billion on homelessness since 2019.
https://www.hoover.org/research/despite-california-spending-24-billion-it-2019-homelessness-increased-what-happened
Secular Talk is completely wrong.
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u/Primos84 1d ago
No
People who say stuff like that literally ignore reality. The fact they get taken seriously and ignore political reality is hilarious
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u/tlrmln 1d ago
California alone has spent more than $20 billion on homelessness since 2019, and the number of homeless has INCREASED significantly.
But what's even more ridiculous about the "Secular Talk" claim is that it implies that Elon being worth $350 billion is somehow responsible for homelessness, as if having two wildly successful companies that employ tens of thousands of people is causing people to shoot up or develop schizophrenia, and the government to fail to do anything about it.
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u/Agarwel 1d ago
Depends what you call "end homelessness". There are some, who are in the bad situation and would apreciate any help. There are some, who will just sabotage their lives and shoot everyhing they have into their veins.
So technically this is not true, because no matter what you do, there will always be some homeless people. So you can not really end homelessness.
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u/vitringur 1d ago
20 billion is a drop in the ocean of the federal budget and does not require any one individual to fix it.
Which means the problem is most likely more complex than that.
Especially since 50% of homeless people are temporarily homeless (in between houses) and the other 50% is in fact severly mentally ill.
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u/Ornery-Exchange-4660 1d ago
The federal government spent $67 billion on housing assistance in 2023, and we still have homelessness.
Apparently, $20 billion isn't enough to end homelessness.
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u/Hank_moody71 1d ago
It’s not a homeless issue. It’s a mental health issue. The GOP loves to say these are lazy drug users, when in fact it’s mental health problems that lead to drug use. If only we had a place for there people like federally funded mental health hospitals……
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u/Edgezg 1d ago
Over the past five years, California alone has spent approximately $24 billion on homelessness, but a state audit found that the state hasn't consistently tracked whether the money improved the situation or not
24 BILLION Towards california alone.
Tell me. Is the homeless situation there, BETTER OR WORSE than it was before?
Throwing money at a problem does not solve the problem.
This is what these arguments NEVER address.
In January 2024, an estimated 187,084 people were experiencing homelessness in California, which accounted for 24% of the nation's total homeless population
So tell me. How did throwing billions of dollars at liberal policies go? Did it work?
No?
IT GOT WORSE?!
Shocker....
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u/Commercial_Rule_7823 1d ago
No.
No money can solve homelessness in america because the constitution.
There will be a notable percentage who will refuse help, treatment, or relocation.
So unless we "force" them to accept the help, its always going to be a thing.
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u/wontreadterms 1d ago
I think the $20b number is for yearly expenses, not a one-time final solution type deal. You would need to invest 20b a yr in the US to solve homelessness, not 20b in total. Just a small caveat.
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u/PlaxicoCN 1d ago
I am NOT an Elon Stan by any means, but some of what he said there is true. There are people I see around that I don't think would turn everything around if they just got that one good opportunity to get back on their feet.
I also don't think that a single lightning bolt style cash infusion would "end" homelessness. This is assuming no new people would ever find themselves homeless, or that everyone that went to treatment and got clean from whatever drugs they were on never relapsed and went back to their old life. A larger problem is that there doesn't seem to be a safety net in America for you if you run into some bad circumstances (medical bankruptcy) or even make some bad choices. It would be cool if we had a billionaire with the White House on speed dial that was concerned about that.
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u/AdZealousideal5383 1d ago
Depends on what you mean by ending homelessness. A small home could in theory be built for under $100,000. 770,000 homeless but let’s say a number of them can live together, so we’re at 500,000 homeless. So we’re looking at $50 billion to build 500,000 small homes. But you don’t have to pay them off upfront, so you could build them all and them off over decades at well less than $50 billion a year.
Then there’s issues with upkeep, electricity, water, etc.
$20 billion total may not house every homeless person but maybe $20 billion yearly.
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u/Alpine_Iris 1d ago
Questions like this are often posted in this sub, but answering this type of question is really beyond the scope of the sort of fermi estimates that are generated here. To put a number value on the amount of money it would take to end homelessness in America, you would need to be talking about a specific proposal. And modeling a complicated system like the housing market, or the behavior of low income renters and their landlords, especially when introducing unprecedented changes to the dynamics of housing and property is more in the realm of multiple papers and years and years of research.
That being said, it doesn't make a ton of sense to talk about the "cost" of ending homlessness, when this would likely be an ongoing expense with extremely significant secondary effects. Ending homelessness would be a net benefit to society, no matter how much it "costs" in dollars. so it doesn't really matter how much the government would have to spend to do it.
The government runs an extremely expensive entity called the military that is full of wasteful spending. And most of the things it does are actively harmful! But military spending also supports the livelihood of a huge chunk of the upper middle class and the capitalist class. Not to mention that a fuckton of scientific research is funded by the military.
I bring this up because the military shows us that extreme government spending will create industries and wealth sort of regardless of the actual goals of that spending. Financially, the military is basically a way to give money to wealthy americans. What the military actually does is mostly irrelevant. An engineer that makes $200k / year at lockheed martin could be using their expertise to create things that are actually beneficial to the world instead of weapons. If the government spent military amounts of money on things like making sure everyone had a home, had free healthcare, free education, etc. Then industries would grow around those initiatives.
Money doesn't evaporate when the government spends it. It goes to the owners of companies (and their workers) that contract with the government. This logic is a little trickle down-ish, but the middleman can be cut out if the government does more things directly (i.e. more "costs" are the salaries of workers) instead of having to pay for the profit of a corporation.
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